Daily Inspiration Quote by Alvin Ailey

Ailey isn’t offering a gentle affirmation; he’s describing a daily demolition job. “One of the processes of your life” frames dignity not as a trait you either have or don’t, but as labor you return to, like rehearsal. The phrasing matters: “processes” suggests repetition, discipline, sweat. For a dancer, the body is the instrument and the battleground, so “break down that inferiority” lands as both psychological and physical. You unlearn what the world has trained into your posture.

The subtext is unmistakably American and unmistakably Black. Ailey came of age under Jim Crow and built his company in a mid-century arts ecosystem that often treated Black artists as guest appearances rather than authors of the canon. Inferiority here isn’t private insecurity; it’s a social script, enforced by institutions and by the everyday humiliations that shrink a person’s sense of scale. His answer is not “feel better,” but “reaffirm” - a verb that admits the pressure will keep coming. The mantra has to be renewed because the assault is ongoing.

“I Am Somebody” is also deliberately plain, almost childlike, which is the point. It refuses the gatekeeping language of worth: no résumé, no pedigree, no “deserving.” Just being. In Ailey’s world, that insistence becomes choreography: bodies onstage taking up space with authority, converting personal affirmation into a public fact. The intent is instruction and permission at once: your life’s work includes refusing the lie, again and again, until it can’t move your body anymore.